Joule Unlimited ready to start construction on biofuels demonstration plant in Hobbs, New Mexico, that will convert sunlight, CO2 waste into up to 75 million gallons of biodiesel, 125 million gallons of ethanol per year

Nov 11, 2011  as

Headlines are rewritten for editorial clarity. The original story and headline begin below.

Original Headline: Construction to begin on NM biofuels plant

HOBBS, New Mexico, November 11, 2011 (as)  A Massachusetts company is ready to start construction on a biofuels demonstration plant in New Mexico.

Joule Unlimited Inc. plans to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide waste into biofuel at the planned facility in Hobbs. The plant is expected to begin operations in 2012.

Joule officials gathered in Hobbs on Thursday to make the announcement.

The plant is expected to generate 20 permanent jobs in addition to construction jobs.

State officials say Joule has the potential to expand its operations to create 500 new jobs in Hobbs by producing up to 75 million gallons of renewable diesel and 125 million gallons of ethanol per year.

Lea County officials say Joule will fit into their so-called EnergyPlex. The county has been working to attract both traditional and renewable energy-related businesses to southeastern New Mexico.

A gallon of diesel has over 50 kwh of energy, full sunlight has about 1kw/square meter at noon. Factoring in efficiency of biologic systems, hours of daylight per day and conversion losses, that is going to be one big demo plant.

You know, I have always been interested in “alcohol as a fuel”. You probably have heard the guy with the website of the same name. I have long thought that counties, particularly smaller or rural counties could build some “stills” to run their county fleet. I could even see fuel coops in such settings.

I do not know if the Joule Unlimited Biofuels demo plant is another Washington DC “green jobs” baby, I hope not.

I can see local folks putting together local solutions for some fuel issues, such as county and town vehicles and extending those successes from there to the general local population.

Cambridge, Mass.  October 18, 2011  Joule today announced its recognition as the 2011 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award Winner in the category of Energy, chosen for its transformational approach to highly-efficient renewable fuel production. In addition, Joule received the Silver award across all of the competition’s 16 categories, for which there were over 600 entrants from around the world.

“We are honored to be the Wall Street Journal’s choice for the most innovative energy company, and to be recognized even beyond our industry as one of the worlds top innovators overall,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO of Joule.

“We started with a big idea  the direct conversion of sunlight to fuel without raw material feedstocks  and four years later we’ve proven the process, optimized the technology, built a strong patent portfolio and laid the groundwork for commercial production to begin in 2013. We will bring much-needed scalability and infrastructure-readiness to the renewable fuels space, with a platform that can yield multiple products, including valuable, fungible diesel fuel vs. a blendstock like biodiesel. We appreciate this recognition of our company’s efforts to successfully innovate outside of today’s common ‘biofuel’ definition,” said Sims.

As stated in the Journal’s report by Kenny Tang, one of the independent judges and founder & CEO of Oxbridge Weather Capital, “In bypassing the limitations of expensive processes in conventional biofuel production, Joule’s technology has the exciting potential to significantly transform the economics of the biofuel industry. If translated into wider use, it is a potential game changerit could become a cost-effective replacement to petroleum on a much wider scale than previously possible, especially with its non-reliance on biomass.”

Unlike the costly, multi-step production of biofuels from biomass, Joule’s Helioculture platform directly and continuously converts solar energy to infrastructure-compatible fuels and chemicals, including fungible diesel and ethanol. The platform combines breakthroughs in genome engineering, process engineering and solar capture and conversion to achieve productivities that will be up to 100X greater than biomass-dependent processes, while avoiding depletion of agricultural land or fresh water. Using sunlight and waste CO2 from industrial emitters or pipelines, with a modular SolarConverter® system that allows ease of scale, Joule targets commercial production of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre annually, at stable costs as low as $20/bble and $0.60/gallon respectively, including subsidies.

Joule has been conducting pilot operations for over one year and will begin construction of its first demonstration-scale plant this quarter.

To select the award winners, a team of Journal editors and reporters reviewed the entries and forwarded 155 to an independent panel of judges from venture capital firms, universities and other organizations and companies. From that pool, the judges chose a total of 35 winners and runners-up in 16 categories. The judges assessed entrants on the following criteria: whether the innovation breaks with conventional ideas or processes in its field, whether it goes beyond marginal improvements on something that already exists, and whether it will have a wide impact in its field or on future technology.

About Joule
Joule is advancing a technology platform for Liquid Fuel from the Sun, expected to eclipse the scale, productivity and cost efficiency of any known alternative to fossil fuel today. Its transformative Helioculture platform directly and continuously converts sunlight and waste CO2 to infrastructure-ready diesel, ethanol or commodity chemicals with no dependence on biomass feedstocks, downstream processing or precious natural resources. This process can yield renewable fuels and chemicals in unprecedented volumes with a fraction of the land required by current methods, leapfrogging biomass-dependent approaches and eliminating the economic and environmental disadvantages of fossil fuels. Founded in 2007 by Flagship VentureLabs, Joule is privately held and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Additional information is available at www.jouleunlimited.com.

Biodiesel made from long carbon chain fatty acids often involves creating an ester in a process involving lye (as a catalyst — no sodium gets into the final product), alcohol, and a tiny bit of water. Straight fat can be fed to diesel engines and they will run on it, but it will gum them up badly.

“Biodiesel made from long carbon chain fatty acids often involves creating an ester in a process involving lye (as a catalyst  no sodium gets into the final product), alcohol, and a tiny bit of water.”

I think the process they are touting is based on growing algae fed on CO2, although I would think additional nutrients would be needed?

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